SBIA, the Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, is a biannual event intended
to be the main forum of the AI community in Brazil. However since
the 1990's it has also attracted researchers from all over the world,
when it started to have an international program committee and also
keynote invited speakers.

The SBIA 2004 is the 17th event of the series. Since 1995, SBIA has
been accepting papers written and presented only in English, with
proceedings being published in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence
series of Springer-Verlag (SBIA'95:991, SBIA'96:1159, SBIA'98:1515,
SBIA'00:1952, SBIA'02:2507).

The SBIA 2004 is sponsored by the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC).
It will be held in São Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhão
in the northeast of Brazil, together with the Brazilian Symposium
on Neural Networks.

This way, we expected you and both the AI and ANN communities to join
us and make this event a very exciting one. Last but not least, besides
the dense scientific programme we are preparing (technical papers,
tutorials, invited talks, and student sections), there are still the
cultural highlights of São Luis, as well as the natural beauties
of one of the most wonderful places in Brazil: beaches, sun, and pristine water.